DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM Jemmy Hixson, right, and Andrea Humbertson, middle, cooled off with cold beers during the UH baseball game yesterday.

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Weather turns up
the heat in isles

Firefighters fear the
hotter-than-usual
weather spells trouble

The last two weeks of hot, record-breaking weather may be a preview of the summer to come.

And that's bad news for firefighters who are battling a Nanakuli brush fire, which is now into its sixth day and has burned more than 2,000 acres.

In the past 10 days, eight high temperature records have been tied or broken at the Honolulu Airport. Temperatures reached 89 degrees yesterday, just one degree shy of a record set in 1996.

The hot, dry weather over the last two weeks is forecast to be the norm this summer, with temperatures about 2-4 degrees above the average.

According to the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center, headquartered in Washington, D.C., the hotter-than-normal days in store for the islands through the summer can be partly blamed on warmer water temperatures and dry air masses.

"It has been unusually dry, with bright sunshine," said weather service forecaster Robert Ballard.

The weather is helping to "dry the ground out," which could mean trouble for firefighters, especially after a wet winter that encouraged lots of brush growth.

"Of course we're concerned" about the dry weather forecast, said Capt. Emmit Kane, the spokesman for the Honolulu Fire Department.

The Nanakuli fire flared up again yesterday, prompting the opening of an evacuation center for people with respiratory problems because of the thick smoke.

On the other side of the mountain, firefighters responded to Leihoku Elementary School last night because of another brush fire.

There have been more than 200 brush fires so far this year, double the number at the same time last year.

The brush fire season, which lasts until September, has also started earlier than usual this year.

In past years, brush fires didn't start popping up until mid-May.

Ballard said the islands isn't expected to see much rain through the week.

And it's not just Oahu that's feeling the heat.

Temperatures on the neighbor islands also neared record highs this week, with Lihue -- whose record high is 85 degrees -- reaching 84 degrees on Friday.

Temperatures have been about 2 degrees above normal for this time of year, Ballard said.

Ballard said that though a 2- or 4-degree temperature difference doesn't sound like much, it's noticed in the islands, where the weather is usually temperate and constant.

"People can be a little more sensitive to smaller changes in the temperature here," he said.

That's no news to Andres Talaro, who was sitting in the shade at Ala Moana Center yesterday.

"It is definitely hotter this year," he said, contorting his sweat-glistened brow. "The last few years it's been rainy. ... But I can take it."

At the mall's Dip-n-Dots, Loke Villahermosa, her husband and two sons were beating the heat with an icy treat.

"We are drinking a lot of liquids," said Villahermosa, who had spent the morning at the beach with her family. "It is getting hotter ... worse."

But the hot weather couldn't be better for the ice cream store's manager, Orlando Benedicto.

This month, he said, with a wide smile, business has been booming.